Soul Beach

my last minutes.
    ‘Are you all right? We can take our time.’ Sahara is smiling broadly, revealing her goofy teeth. Was she jealous of my sister’s effortless prettiness? Of her success?
    I try to calm myself. It’s rubbish, of course it is. The killer was obviously a man. One who wanted Meggie all to himself. Tim or . . .
    Sahara has taken my arm, and pushes me up a few carpeted steps. The wooden door to the flatlet is the same, but the glass panel in it is papered over from the inside, with a sign saying NO ACCESS. ‘They had to cover it up because all the freshers came here to gawp. Especially late at night. Some have even convinced themselves they’ve heard your sister singing.’
    ‘So no one’s living in any of the rooms now?’
    I try to calculate how loud I’d have to scream to be heard from here.
    ‘Nope. No one’s on the entire floor. They’ve left it closed for this year as a mark of respect. Or to ward off the ghouls.’
    Ghouls like Sahara?
    She hits the down button on the lift, ‘So no one will realise there’s someone on the third floor,’ then glances around, and when she’s sure no one’s lurking, uses the key to let us both into the flat, closing the heavy door behind us.
    It’s stifling in the corridor, hospital hot, and completely airless. I’m not sure I could get enough oxygen into my lungs now to scream, even if I wanted to.
    I don’t want to. It’d be mad. Sahara’s no more a killer than Tim is, surely. They’re just students. Bystanders.
    ‘Something’s different here,’ I say, surprised at how high my voice sounds. Then I look down at the grey concrete under my feet. ‘What happened to the carpet?’
    ‘Forensics took it,’ Sahara says. ‘Don’t be shocked, but they took quite a lot away.’
    She puts the key in the door of Room A, and pushes it ajar. ‘After you?’
    Oh, God, why did I let her bring me here? I don’t want her behind me. She could . . .
    I feel a firm push in the small of my back, and I fall against the door, which swings fully open. ‘Ouch.’
    ‘Sorry, Alice. Don’t know my own strength sometimes.’
    Meggie’s room is completely stripped out.
    No longer a room, but a cell – the floor the same rough grey as the corridor, the walls a dirty cream, with cleaner patches where the furniture and pin board used to be. Like ghosts. Everything soft has been removed – the curtains, the bed, the carpet. The tiny bathroom pod that all the students moan about, because you can’t have a shower without soaking the loo roll, is still there, but when I open the door, the toilet, basin and plastic walls have been hacked out.
    But it’s not the bareness of the space that upsets me. It’s the feel.
    ‘You can feel it too, can’t you, Alice?’
    I swing around. Sahara’s eyes are boring into me, though at least she’s not carrying an axe or a pillow and there’s no room for either in her bag.
    I shake my head. ‘Feel what?’
    ‘It’s like an aura, isn’t it?’
    ‘No,’ I lie. I’m not admitting anything to her. Even if she had nothing to do with my sister’s murder, she seems to be getting a kick from her death.
    But the horrible thing is that Sahara’s right. There is an aura, even though it’s exactly the kind of airy-fairy term that Meggie would have laughed at. There’s evil in this room, or, at the very least, an intense darkness despite the sunlight now streaming through the locked window.
    Even if I didn’t know my sister had died in this place, I would have sensed the complete absence of good here. But is it the room, or is it Sahara? I try to tap into it, to reach out for a clue about what happened. Who did it . . .
    I hear waves. The waves of Soul Beach. They’re almost a reassuring sound now, because they’re always there, if I choose to tune out the everyday noises of ‘real’ life. But above the crash and hiss of the seawater I swear I hear laughter. Meggie’s? No, the sound is too cruel. It must be someone else’s.
    ‘Alice?’
    I am falling, falling through the darkness, and though I fight to open my eyes it’s as though someone has covered my face and is pressing down on my nose and mouth so I can’t breathe. Everything is dark and I taste and smell blackness, the dank clay stink of earth in my face and hair and . . .
    ‘Sorry, but I have to do this.’
    I feel a sharp pain across my cheek, shocking enough to make my eyes pop open. No more darkness, no more mocking laughter, just Sahara with her hand in